Point-of-care testing (POCT) is medical testing at or near the site of patient care. The driving notion behind POCT is to bring the test conveniently and immediately to the patient. This increases the likelihood that the patient, physician, and care team will receive results quickly, which allows for immediate clinical management decisions to be made.
POCT is often accomplished through the use of transportable and handheld instruments and test kits. Small bench analyzers or fixed equipment can also be used when a handheld device is not available. The goal of POCT is to collect the specimen and obtain the results in a very short period of time at or near the location of the patient so that the treatment plan can be adjusted as necessary before the patient leaves. Cheaper, faster, and smarter POCT devices have increased the use of POCT approaches by making it cost-effective for many diseases, such as diabetes, carpal tunnel syndrome and acute coronary syndrome.
Rapid point-of-care, antibody-based testing is not currently available for the diagnosis of autoimmune and most infectious diseases. For detecting autoantibodies associated with most autoimmune conditions, fluid-phase immunoprecipitation assays are necessary in order to enable detection of conformation-specific antibodies; however, these assays usually involve radioactivity, which is not feasible for point-of-care applications. Therefore, rapid, POCT diagnostic assays for diagnosis of autoimmune and infectious diseases would satisfy an important clinical need.